


like an old coat

by Ink_On_Parchment



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: As much as death means anything here, Balance Spoilers, Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reaper Squad, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 21:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20535218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink_On_Parchment/pseuds/Ink_On_Parchment
Summary: They lived a century where death was a painful stopping point, something you had to endure and your loved ones had to suffer through until they could reset. It was one hundred years of dreading living alone, of leaving your family behind.It didn’t have to be like that anymore.





	like an old coat

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for Balance before, but I have a lot of feelings about these characters. I hope you guys enjoy!

Barry was the first of them to get really, truly hurt. The kind of hurt they couldn’t fix.

It really shouldn’t have surprised them that it was him, and it didn’t surprise Barry. Kravitz had been at this job for a long, long time. He knew the risks, knew what he was walking into, knew what to look for and what to dodge, and now he had even more to come home to than he did before. Kravitz had a millennium in his job, and he wasn’t one to let someone hit him when he could avoid it (ignoring pretty wizards and his lucky, fate-filled friends). Barry was powerful, he would agree with that, but he wasn’t Lup. He wasn’t the bottled chaos and hellfire that she was when she was determined. His skills were more on research and discovery, and they covered a much larger swath of magic than hers did. And beside all that, Lup would rather throw herself into her own fireball than leave Taako alone, especially now.

So no, it didn’t surprise Barry that he was the first. Not when he’d lived through one hundred years of hard resets, of having nothing but pure faith in his family to bring him back when he died, of death being nothing but a mild inconvenience. Death was just a pit stop on the Starblaster, and he had taken advantage of that. Then he’d been a lich, and it had been a decade of living on the run and existing to make a body only to wish he could die just so he could remember his family’s, his wife’s, face.

No. Barry wasn’t surprised when they had to bring his soul, now a pearlescent ivory instead of the crackling red he was used to, in front of the Raven Queen. He was nervous, he was hurting just looking at the look on Lup’s face, but he wasn’t surprised.

He’d been hit with a necromancer’s _Power Word Kill_ while he was engaged with the other cultists, and his body had dropped like his human body was wont to do.

The memory of Lup’s rage was still painful to think about. But she had scooped up his hovering soul with the gentlest hands and looked at Kravitz like one loud word would shatter them both.

He had placed a hand on her shoulder, flesh knitting over his skeletal figure faster than Barry could ever remember, and said quietly. “The bodies you reconstructed were made for liches. You’re reapers now. The Raven Queen gives all of us the ability to construct our own forms, you have just never had a reason to. This is painful, but it is not an end.”

With that he looked at Barry, smiled just a touch sadly, and materialized his scythe to open a portal to the astral plane.

The astral plane was just like it always was, dark and cold and muted, but he was safe in the cradle of Lup’s palms. They walked down the corridor towards their Queen’s receiving room in relative silence, but Lup’s breathing was loud in the murky darkness and Kravitz kept looking backward over his shoulder at them.

The Raven Queen’s eyes were on them as soon as they entered, and Barry felt her attention like he never had before. Her gaze was a heavy, suffocating thing when it landed and stayed on him, and he wished more than ever for a body to shield himself with.

“You have come to harm, Barry Bluejeans.” Her voice was like thunder, like the earth moving beneath his feet. “But all is not lost. You are one of mine now, and I protect my own.”

He felt her power flow over him, through him, and his body started to reconstruct at her nudging. He was paralyzed under it, but he could feel how it was done, how to redo it for when this would happen again (and it would, he knew it would). She was taking the time to teach him just as much as she was helping him heal. While it was an exhausting process, he would take it over the _painnothinglightbreathe _of the resets on the Starblaster and the even more agonizing deaths while he was a lich.

It was the first time since swearing his eternity to her service that he really felt like it wasn’t a one-way connection. Like she cared about him as much as he was grateful to her.

Before long he was standing on his own two wobbly feet. It was his body, just colder and more still. The bow he dropped into was low and, for maybe the first time, reverent. “Thank you.”

He couldn’t see her ever-shifting face, but she sounded like she was smiling when she said. “You’re welcome, my child. Go home, rest. Come back when you are steady again.”

With that he slumped into Lup’s arms, letting Kravitz take care of the portal home. They made it through without incident, Lup a solid presence at his side, and Kravitz waved them off at the door. It was quick work to make it to bed, pressed as close to each other as physics would allow.

Barry fell asleep with Lup’s hands trembling against his chest.

* * *

Kravitz was the next one of them to get hit, and he hadn’t even had backup when it had happened.

Taako was getting ready for bed when he teleported home, still lacking the energy to conjure anything more substantial than the misty white of his soul. Taako’s hair was down and he was wrapped in oversized pajamas, but that didn’t stop him from immediately being on guard when he caught sight of Kravitz.

“Krav?” he asked, moving closer. “You wanna explain why you’re glowing, hon?”

Kravitz floated closer, into Taako’s personal space. Something warm unfurled through his soul when Taako immediately stepped even closer, hands coming up to skim over the misty-solid edges of his soul. “I got… hurt. I don’t have the energy or the magic to reconstruct my usual form right now.”

Taako’s brow furrowed even farther, ears tilting down, but his hands were infinitely gentle. “Are you okay? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned the glowing gig outside of possessions, or, you know, changing forms.”

“I got hit pretty hard. Hard enough I had to revert to a magical form.” The look on Taako’s face _hurt, _because it was obvious he could hear what he wasn’t saying. Of course he could, he was family to liches, to people who shrugged off death like an old coat. (Suddenly he couldn’t get the look on Lup’s face out of his head, the devastation, when she thought this would be the _last _time, the final time, and the utter relief when she had watched Barry be remade.) The only thing he wanted in that moment was to soothe that worry. “It normally isn’t this bad, really. Reapers can reform their bodies, and all I need is a little bit of rest. I really just wanted to come home.”

Taako’s whole posture softened at the last statement, and he cradled Kravitz’ soul closer to his chest. “Whatever you need, babe.”

He let his insubstantial weight rest in Taako’s hands, taking comfort in the infinite warmth of his skin and missing the _shockpainfear _in his eyes.

* * *

When Lup gets hit they’re all there.

The blade of the sword slashes across her chest before any of them can even move, and suddenly everything they’ve learned about their reaper powers is forgotten.

Because this is the last world. This is it. This is their last chance. This is their home.

They all watch between one second and the next as she raises a hand, incinerates the woman in front of her with a fireball, and then slumps backward as her scythe falls to the ground beside her, still as stone.

Barry screams, a jagged “NO!” even as he runs recklessly to her side, and Taako is as still as a statue while Kravitz defends his back.

When Lup gets hit it’s like a bomb goes off.

Her last fireball took out her own assailant, but Taako’s silent Prismatic Spray takes out three more. Kravitz dispatches the rest while Taako stalks through the carnage to his sister, shaking.

His sister, who he’d lost and lost and lost before.

His sister, who’d been ripped from his mind and left to die alone.

His sister, who he will not let leave them again.

And his brother-in-law, who he will not let suffer any more.

He turns back to their assailants on autopilot, movements economical even as he puts himself in front of Barry and Lup, disregarding strategy to protect them. He feels it when he burns himself out to disintegrate the remaining cultists, but he can’t find it in himself to care. Their enemies are gone. They’re safe.

It doesn’t matter because Lup isn’t there.

He turns around after he makes sure their enemies are only so much dust on the ground, and he is met with a sight that is both horrifying and horrifyingly familiar.

Barry is cradling Lup’s body, and he can tell he has her head in his lap without getting close enough to see over his shoulder. Her robes are cut and she is still, and Taako cannot breathe. 

Suddenly he cannot see through the tears, and that’s when he feels the cold, firm hand on his shoulder. He looks up and it’s Kravitz, staring at him but facing Lup. He nudges him forward, closer to Barry and Lup.

(He doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to see. He’s been here before and it’s hard enough to go on when he knows it’s only going to be for a few months, how are they going to do this _now?)_

Kravitz’ voice is gentle when he says, just loud enough for them all to hear it in the dark cave, “This is not an end for her. This is not an end for any of you. She is a reaper. She won’t leave you again.”

That’s when he sees it, Barry holding the pale-gold soul in his hands with the utmost care, and he sucks in a breath so fast he gets dizzy with it. She’s beautiful, and alive, and _here. _

It almost knocks Taako down.

He reaches up, covers Kravitz cold hand with his, and gives him a smile that he knows looks a bit manic.

When he looks through the portal into the astral plane Kravtitz has made, it doesn’t feel like an end.

It feels like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
